When I heard of the possibility of a W3C Semantic Web Education and
Outreach Interest Group I started jotting/blogging things that came to
mind. Now the group exists (http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/sweo/), and
below is what I came up with (which already seem a little out-of-date,
which has to be a good sign).
The group's charter seems reasonable, although I get a feeling that
it's aiming inside the enterprise rather than the somewhat more
relevant side of the firewall, the web. In light of that I'll add
another suggestion to the list below: to survey and address head-on
from a SW perspective recent developments on the web, in particular
those under the banner of "Web 2.0".
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Totally informal, jotted notes, some already blogged, some at the
@@TODO stage (I thought I had 10, not sure what the others were)
SWEO Suggestion #0 : A blog
http://dannyayers.com/2006/02/02/sweo-suggestion-0-a-blog/
[note libby's comment]
SWEO Suggestion #1 : Semantic^2 Web Tutorials
http://dannyayers.com/archives/2006/02/02/sweo-suggestion-1-semantic2-web-tutorials/
[note http://rdfabout.com]
SWEO Suggestion #2 : Semantic Web in a Box
http://dannyayers.com/archives/2006/02/02/sweo-suggestion-2-semantic-web-in-a-box/
SWEO Suggestion #3 : SemWeb Bases
http://dannyayers.com/archives/2006/02/03/sweo-suggestion-4-semweb-bases/
SWEO Suggestion #4 : Kitty
bounties!
shared server space
code exchange (I do 3hrs Java in exchange for 3hrs Python)
SWEO Suggestion #5 : SW Pattern Repository
This blurs into Best Practices and Deployment a bit, but then what
doesn't...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_pattern_(computer_science)
http://webpatterns.org/http://www.welie.com/patterns
ESW Wiki: see
FilterDown - interface with RSS/OPML
TriplestoreWhiteBoard
SWEO Suggestion #6 : Job Mart
Job/studentship mart
SWEO Suggestion #7 : Web 2.0 Mashups
Aside from being a quick path to answering "where are the
applications?", and generally looking cool from the lay web
developer's point of view, there's another aspect that might be worth
bearing in mind. For many (especially larger) companies, the kind of
interaction they'd have on their roadmap for tech like that of the
W3C's Semantic Web will be non-commital R&amp;D, no plans of being
first mover. However, mashups are a direct application of published
data and/or exposed APIs. So any interesting mashup has the potential
as a positive Trojan Horse. So e.g. a really cool app using Google
Base with SemWeb tech would make Google a loosely-coupled early
adopter. Bottom-up influence is possible, even on established
megaliths - as the influence of Scoble's blogging on Microsoft
demonstrates.
Marc Canter has done a little evangelical work down this path, in the
form of a Compatibility Matrix.
See also : ESW Wiki - Micromodels.
Hmm... maybe go through something like Technorati's top 100, first
pass grab the feed and FOAF data of each site, make an aggregator
(boring!). Second pass - address what the blogs are about, e.g. scrape
Gizmodo, gather microformat reviews of the gadgets described.
Accumulate all of this stuff in a triplestore with SPARQL endpoint, do
a nice facetted view, etc etc.
SWEO Suggestion #8 : New Media
Tech-management targeted White Papers
Screencasts
Podcasts
Posters
T-shirts
Whateever it takes!
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On a mailing list point, I would guess that the most useful resource
available to the SWEO group is SWIG, and SWIG can directly benefit
from SWEO's work so hopefully there'll be plenty of cross-pollination.
Oh, and I wonder if the W3C would care to hire a gardener for the ESW Wiki...
Cheers,
Danny.
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http://dannyayers.com